Untitled

UNTITLED

It’s part of a triology, really
‘What do you call this?’ The film director Marty DiBergi points towards the piano keybord where Nigel Tufnlel’s genle touch brings to life a beautiful, delicate piece of music. ‘Well, this piece is called Lick my Love Pump’.

As some of you may allready have realised, neither DiBergi or Tufnel are anything more than characters from the 1984 movie ‘This is Spinal Tap’, and the conversation cited above is simply a joke from this delightful mockumentary. The scene is a well over one minute long piece of beautiful, somewhat sophisticated piano music, casually interrupted by seemingly normal conversation. But you are being set up. You are being set up for this one punchline: The title does not match your expectations for this style of music.

A brief history
For most of Western history artworks were commissioned by churches and royal courts. They generally depicted established, recognisable, canonical scenes and stayed fairly stationary. Even during the Dutch Golden Age, where the new merchant class was able to aquire artworks for their private homes, the works tended to remain in the family. Titles didn’t become useful before art started moving. The salons and galleries needed to assign individual titles to identify spesific works. These titles was generally not given by the artists, but by gallerists, curators, critics, collectors and benefactors. Artists at large didn’t start providing titles for their own work before well into the 1800s, possibly in an effort to reclaim control over the artworks reception. Later, artists like Picasso decided he did not want titles to influence how his works were percieved. The American abstract expressionists titled their work more akin to Western classical music naming conventions, and eventually, especially after the rise of minimalism, stopped titling their artwork alltoghether.  

Prosaic or poetic
A title may serve several different purposes. They might be arcival – such as Work 413 or 07/2021, identifying – such as Red Squares on black circle or Portrait of a Young Girl in a Pink Tutu or categorical – such as Landscape, Composition or Still Life.

These are what I would call prosaic titles. They often seem obvious and effortless and hardly, if at all, tie into the subject matter of the work. Unless, of course, the title does not match your expectations. If Portrait of a Young Girl in a Pink Tutu was a gigantic sculpture representing a green apple with a yellow pencil through it, that would shift the title into the realm of the poetic. These are titles that add to, hint at, contextualise, reinforce and represent the artwork, and these are the titles I am discussing.

To title or not to title
There are valid arguments for- aswell as against providing artworks with a title. It also depends on the style of painting whether a title is percieveably meaningful or not. Some artists don’t want their non-representational artworks to be experienced in a literary context, thus connecting language in form of a title to the work would be counterproductive. Some artists do not want titles to influence how their works is percieved. Some probably just don’t want to spend the time and effort to comming up with a title they nontheless will feel is arbitrary. In my case the latter is true of my smaller, non-objective works on paper. The creation proscess is so intuitive and moving so fast that thinking of a title will just break the workflow. I could of course sit down with the finished paintings and try to come up with a title when I am done for the day, but I don’t really feel I have anything to add to them. They are merely objects to be percieved, experienced, investigated visually.

So what reasons could there possibly be for naming a work of art? I cannot think of a single reason to feel a shred of guilt about influencing how one’s artwork is percieved. The artist created it in the first place, so they are allready influencing the perception of anyone experiencing it in a major way. Sure, you can accuse them of robbing spectators of the experience of exploring the painting, but I wouldn’t completely agree. A title does in many cases answer some questions, but I will argue that a good title raises more questions than it answers. Some titled artworks even require the acquisition of further information to fully understand the work. But what does it mean to understand an artwork? A work of art where the artist intends to convey a spesific political view should probably invite a literal understanding. As regards to the visual arts, a purely visual understanding should be achieveable without additional information. While it definetely steers, one might even claim narrows, the observers experience, it might also enrich it. A title can bridge the gap between the work and the viewer, it stretches out a hand and offers them a way to remember and even to continue the exploration in their mind’s eye if they so please.

So…
A title should serve a purpose. Laziness is not a good reason for not comming up with a title. Neither is a desire to fulfill a percieved convention or expectation a good reason for making up a title. So here we are, down to the same old, boring conclution living in a complex world often leads us to: It’s simply a matter of weighing the arguments and see whitch way your scale tips. As for this text it was clear from the very beginning: Untitled can also be a fitting title.